Food Lover’s Friday: Weeknight Meals

Ohhhh it’s feeling like a Food Lover’s Friday kind of day. I’ve been doing a lot of search for new weeknight meals to change things up around here. Our weeknight schedules usually look pretty open when I check my calendar, yet we somehow always manage to throw something into the schedule that messes with everything else (“Hey, we should go try out Breakside Brewery” “Oh, (insert name here) wants to grab a beer after work”…and the list goes on).

It can be easy to forget to make cooking a priority during the week, but it’s a must. In our house, dinner becomes lunch the next day–so to screw up dinner means that you’ve subsequently also messed up lunch the next day. That starts a bad streak of an attitude because I’m fine eating out one night but hate the idea of spending money on two separate meals in a row when, with just a little more effort and time, I could have had two home-cooked meals.

Try out these weeknight meals and see how they fit into your weeknight routine–let me know how it goes:)

Check out this recipe from Ambitious Kitchen. It made for a very yummy weeknight meal at our house. Our only change was the bread crumbs as I had forgotten to buy more panko crumbs. Even with regular breadcrumbs the recipe was adaptable and delectable, especially topped with some fresh chopped spicy oregano and hot sauce!

Once I had finished that I had already noticed another one of her recipes…

This recipe was decent. I felt like I had ruined it as I had attempted to top it with a homemade BBQ sauce I had found, which didn’t turn out how I liked it. While I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that BBQ sauce recipe for this salad, it may be good on grilled foods. I would have much preferred a tangy honey mustard dressing or even a simple vinaigrette! Chickpeas can also be sort of difficult in salads because they all roll to the bottom of the bowl when you toss it–I could see taking a bit more of a Mexican twist (especially since it had avocado in it already) and doing a queso fresco, Cholula hot sauce, some black beans, and corn chips. YUM. This salad would also make a nice vegetarian option as you wouldn’t really miss the chicken if it were left out.

3 days agoby TheSpicyBeeLet’s pause for a moment as I would like to call out my main squeeze Ktams for really going above and beyond recently. *** A few weeks ago our fridge bit the big one at the young age of 4 yrs old. Distraught, we salvaged what we could from the fridge and began the stress inducing process of deciding whether we spend the money on a repair person coming out (that we had deduced would cost nearly as much as replacing the fridge) or coming up with about 1.5K to replace it. He came up with an option C which

2 weeks agoby TheSpicyBeeIt was a lovely group at @uprightbrewing this evening for the release of their #OregonNative#Fourhands and #SoleComposition — beers that really need little introduction. If you enjoy interesting beer you’ll never be let down by Upright Brewing. Oregon Native is a collaboration with Patton Valley Vineyards. It combines their Pinot noir grapes with Upright’s method of cask fermentation, in addition to native yeast to the Patton Valley. This beer is a bit heavier handed than its release mate, but very complex and is best tasted side-by-side with Sole Composition, the non-bottle condition version, which drinks like a red wine.